- Judge orders release of Florida woman abducted by ICE gang
Source: Boston Globe
“A federal judge on Monday ordered the release of a woman [abducted] by ICE at Logan International Airport after traveling to Boston for a Noah Kahan concert. Maria Rosales, 32, a former DACA recipient whose application to renew her spot in the immigration program has been pending since 2023, was [abducted] at the airport while trying to fly home to Florida on July 10. She has been detained at an ICE [concentration camp] in Burlington since then, according to court filings. US District Judge Myong J. Joun ordered that Rosales be released by 7 p.m. Monday. Rosales was no longer listed on ICE’s detainee locator website on Tuesday morning.” (07/21/26)
- Filipino, Chinese regime summon each others’ envoys over South China Sea incident
Source: Reuters
“Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will summon China’s ambassador in Manila, his office said on Tuesday, hours after Manila’s envoy in Beijing was similarly summoned following accusations by both sides of provoking tensions in the contested South China Sea. Presidential Communications Undersecretary Claire Castro confirmed to reporters Marcos had summoned Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan at 5 p.m. (0900 GMT) on Tuesday. Earlier in the day, China’s foreign ministry said it summoned Manila’s envoy to China. The summoning of ambassadors comes a day after the Philippines and China accused each other [over] an encounter in the Second Thomas Shoal of the South China Sea. Philippine officials said one of its navy personnel was struck on the head but Beijing said Manila provoked the incident.” (07/21/26)
- Judge Approves a $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement Over Books Used to Train the Claude Chatbot
Source: US News & World Report
“A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides ‘meaningful relief’ to affected authors and publishers. About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment. Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was ‘the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.'” (07/21/26)
- Hungary: Prosecutors raid Orbán party’s data center in embezzlement probe
Source: ABC News
“Prosecutors and investigators with Hungary’s tax authority on Tuesday raided offices housing data servers used by former prime minister Viktor Orbán ‘s Fidesz party as part of a probe into suspected embezzlement and other crimes, a prosecutor’s office spokesperson told The Associated Press. Fidesz accused the governing Tisza party, led by pro-European Prime Minister Péter Magyar, of seeking to use legal means to destroy it. Marianna Bodó, a spokesperson for the Bács-Kiskun County chief prosecutor’s office, said in an email that the raid was part of an investigation into the suspected misuse of grant money through Hungary’s National Cultural Fund while Orbán’s government was in office.” (07/21/26)
- Novo Nordisk sues Eli Lilly, alleging misleading GLP-1 advertising
Source: CNBC
“Novo Nordisk filed a lawsuit against Eli Lilly, alleging that its advertising campaigns for its blockbuster obesity and diabetes drugs are designed to mislead consumers about their superior efficacy relative to the Danish drugmaker’s rival injections. Novo Nordisk is specifically taking issue with nationwide ads that cite what it called ‘outdated’ clinical trials to compare the highest doses of Lilly’s medicines to lower doses of Novo’s drugs. Novo asked the court to permanently stop Lilly from running the ads and require the drugmaker to issue corrective advertising.” (07/21/26)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/21/novo-nordisk-sues-eli-lilly-glp-1-ads.html
- Tropical Storm Bertha to make likely Louisiana landfall before Texas
Source: Houston Chronicle
“Tropical Storm Bertha is expected to make a Louisiana landfall later this week—possibly Wednesday—before a more disorganized system impacts the Texas Gulf Coast on Friday and Saturday. If that turns out to be true, the biggest impact for Texas could turn out to be low levels of rain from one to four inches. … If Bertha heads to Texas, it will most likely do so as a tropical depression or weaker. That could mean rain for portions of the Texas coast. The 4 a.m. update downgraded that rain chance and mostly erased predicted rainfall south of Victoria. Houston would still get potentially two inches of rain.” (07/21/26)
https://www.chron.com/weather/article/tropical-storm-bertha-texas-22353383.php
- Reminder: US Tariffs are Taxes on Americans
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“Tariff supporters try to sell their desired tax increases on American consumers as ‘retaliation’ against other regimes for ‘unfair’ treatment of goods made by American workers and exported by American companies. Odd form of retaliation, that — ‘you’re hurting YOUR people … fine, we’ll hurt OUR people — that’ll show YOU!’ And for for the most part, those other regimes aren’t the manufacturers of or buyers of those exports/imports, any more than the US regime is the manufacturer or buyer of whatever the company you work for happens to export or the imported goods you choose to buy. So no, tariffs aren’t ‘retaliation’ for ‘unfairness.’ What are they, then? They’re a way of protecting politicians’ domestic business cronies from competition, at the expense of domestic consumers.” (07/21/26)
- America’s National Mood Was OK in 1988-1991
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan“Materially, Americans are far better off than they were during the Cold War. But even thinkers who acknowledge this truism often fondly reminisce about the long-lost Golden Age of American optimism that supposedly spanned the second half of the 20th century. This reminiscing always puzzles me, because I vividly remember the second half of the second half of the 20th century. Except for a brief window of roughly 1988-1991, my first-hand experience is that America’s national mood has been relentlessly bad. While I’ve known plenty of American optimists, and count myself among them, ‘American optimism’ is a will-o’-the-wisp. It appears so fleetingly that you have to wonder if it was ever there at all.” (07/21/26)
- Reality Sends the Bill: How Ignoring Price Signals Ends in Disaster
Source: The Daily Economy
by Attila Rebak“If prices carry such reliable knowledge, why do governments override them so routinely — and why does it so often take a catastrophe to stop them? The answer is the least romantic and most dependable part of political economy. A market transmits a price almost instantly. Politics transmits it slowly and through heavy distortion. Mancur Olson explained its core: the beneficiaries of an intervention are usually concentrated, organized, and loud, while those who pay for it are dispersed, unorganized, and often not yet harmed.” (07/21/26)
- How To Honor the Dead US Service Members
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ron Paul“Over the weekend the Pentagon announced that four more US soldiers have been killed in President Trump’s war on Iran. That brings the total to 17, but many believe the real number of dead US servicemembers is much higher than that. The Pentagon has claimed it has no obligation to reveal how many military personnel have been injured, which suggests that number may be much higher than we are hearing. Many of these injuries will be horrific and life-altering. … If the President really wants to honor our military, he will declare an end to this pointless war, bring all of our troops home from the region, and announce that the destroyed US bases will not be rebuilt. It is time to end the American empire and come home.” (07/21/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2026/07/20/how-to-honor-the-dead-us-service-members
- What Trump didn’t say about election interference
Source: The Hill
by Merrill Matthews“After six years of asserting the 2020 presidential election was stolen and repeatedly claiming he would produce the evidence, President Trump gave it his best shot Thursday night. It didn’t go well. His speech was universally panned for regurgitating what we already knew and not providing any proof of election interference. But the worst part is the U.S. intelligence he so frequently mentioned largely disagrees with him. Here’s what Trump didn’t say.” (07/21/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5979616-trump-misquotes-intel-reports/
- My Visit to the Data Center
Source: RealClearPolitics
by Stephen Moore“I am well aware that Americans are very split on the benefits of data centers, and the majority of voters say they don’t want one anywhere near their community. I’m in favor of letting voters of every community decide whether they want a data center or not. But I also believe that if people actually visited a data center, as I did, they would be astounded by the jaw-dropping technological wizardry that lies within. If you get the chance to tour one of these facilities, take it. And take your kids.” (07/21/26)
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/07/21/my_visit_to_the_data_center_154351.html
- What Is the Government Good For?
Source: Law & Liberty
by Bradley J Birzer“Over the last several years, as we all navigate the surge of the deconstructive radical left and the surge of populism on the right, the meanings of several words and terms—once so sure and so inspirational—have become loose from their moorings. Words and terms such as conservative, classical liberal, libertarian, and even anarchist don’t mean quite what they once did. Even the very directional political terms—right and left—do not mean quite what they once did. … In his truly insightful and brilliant book, Deleting the State: Requiem for an Illusion, Bridgewater State University philosophy professor Aeon Skoble dives deep into this very quagmire of meaning, looking left and right, up and down, exploring the mundane and transcendent, the humane and inhumane.” (07/21/26)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/what-is-the-government-good-for/
- The Death of a Silenced Conscience
Source: Roads Go Ever On
by Bekah Graham“One of the reasons people like me (when I was still a Christian) vociferously opposed linking Christianity to American right-wing politics was knowing it would inevitably become difficult to distinguish between an informed believer speaking from sincere conviction and a charlatan appropriating faith to gain new followers and climb the ladder of political power. I’m no longer a believer, but I have been proven correct. I don’t envy my former siblings in Christ, who are confronted daily with the anti-Christ behavior of professing Christians in political office and their loudest public supporters. Since President Donald Trump’s reelection, anyone attempting to continue supporting him while sincerely seeking to follow Jesus must wage a daily war to reconcile backing an administration that routinely demeans, dehumanizes, and destroys lives.” (07/21/26)
https://bekahgwen.substack.com/p/the-death-of-a-silenced-conscience
- This Is How We Close the Camps
Source: The Nation
by John Washington“Until we, as a society, reject the camp and its logic, it will remain a threat—and the linchpin in the entire immigration enforcement regime.” (07/21/26)
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/immigration-camps-how-to-close-a-camp/
- Exporters Still Are Not Eating the Trump Tariffs: They are Taxes on Us
Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker“As we all know, Donald Trump likes to play the tough guy. Unfortunately, he often does it in really foolish ways, and this time I’m not talking about his war against Iran. I’m talking about Trump’s tariffs. From the way he talks, he seems to think that foreign countries are sending us checks equal to the tariffs he has imposed on U.S. imports from them. Donald Trump’s mind can be a scary place, so it’s not worth trying to tease out his thought process, except to point out that the idea that foreigners are sending us checks is absurd.” (07/21/26)
- The Trump economy is doing better than the media want to admit
Source: Fox News
by Liz Peek“President Donald Trump has a good story to tell on the economy; he should be telling it, because it’s a sure bet the liberal media will not. Consider the big picture: unemployment is low, real wages are rising, the stock market is high, investment is booming and inflation, though above the Federal Reserve’s target, came down last month, and will recede again once oil prices stabilize. (Inflation, most recently at 3.5%, and at 2.6% excluding volatile food and energy, is also significantly below the 4.95% recorded on average under President Joe Biden.) … Sure, we have challenges, as always, and especially with the cost of living being too high and housing too expensive for many Americans. But, overall, the economy is in pretty good shape. That’s not what most people think.” (07/21/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/liz-peek-trump-economy-doing-better-media-admit
- Chance and its consequences
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie“William James called her ‘the bitch-goddess, Success.’ He meant it as a complaint about America’s worship of her, but the phrase catches something true. She is a goddess because we deify whatever she touches, crediting it with foresight and merit it never had. She is a bitch because she hands out her favours with no regard for desert at all. What I want to call contingency is just her proper name – the rather distinguished term by which we dress up and disguise mere chance.” (07/21/26)
- Trump Is NOT A Reluctant War President
Source: Caitlin Johnstone
by Caitlin Johnstone“One of the dumbest popular narratives you see today is the idea that Zionists persuaded a reluctant Trump to start a war with Iran after he was re-elected, like they were chasing him around going ‘Would you like to bomb Iran? like the guy from Green Eggs and Ham while he yelled ‘Not in a box! Not with a fox!’ until he eventually caved in. It is now abundantly clear that this war was planned a long time ago. Not in 2026, not in 2025, not in 2024, and not even during the Biden administration. This was planned before Trump was ever elected president.” (07/21/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/07/21/trump-is-not-a-reluctant-war-president/
- The AI tax movement is built on a myth
Source: Washington Post
by Adam Michel“Washington at last seems to have hit upon a revenue idea that both Republicans and Democrats like: taxing artificial intelligence to help the American worker. Too bad it would do the opposite. On the right, President Donald Trump wants AI companies to give ‘something back to the public,’ while Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has expressed openness to taxation to make sure AI companies ‘are actually working for the public good.’ On the left, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) wants the public to own half of the biggest AI companies, and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) has called for a tax on AI tokens, the basic data unit processed by large language models. The various tax proposals rely on different mechanisms, but the same story motivates them. It’s a story based on a zero-sum assumption — that gains for capital automatically means losses for labor.” (07/21/26)
- Diamonds in the Lab
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Stefan Bartl“From De Beers’s 1940s slogan ‘A Diamond Is Forever,’ to ‘Every Kiss Begins with Kay’ and ‘He Went to Jared,’ the diamond industry had already done its most important work before anyone chose a ring. It had written the rules of romance: what love looked like, what it cost, and what it said about someone who spent less. Those rules were not ancient traditions. The industry manufactured not diamonds, but desire. Even in popular culture, Rihanna gave us the song ‘Diamonds.’ The more interesting economic story, however, is not the diamonds in the sky, but the diamonds in the lab. Desire has not gone anywhere. For the first time, it has a better offer.” (07/21/26)
- The Ideology Behind the American Revolution
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Wanjiru Njoya“In his book The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell argues that most people’s political opinions are shaped by ‘a particular set of underlying assumptions about the world—a certain vision of reality.’ By vision, he means an instinctive sense of the correct way of understanding the world and making sense of what we see or hear. The same insight applies to people’s understanding of political labels like libertarian or conservative. We assume we know what a libertarian means by reference to his ideology, or that we know what it means to describe a position as conservative. But often these assumptions owe more to our own vision of the world than they do to the speaker’s intention.” (07/21/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/ideology-behind-american-revolution
- The World Is Collapsing—or Is It?
Source: Townhall
by Alan Joseph Bauer“The U.S.-Israel relationship will change after Donald Trump. It may become more transactional, and the U.S. does benefit enormously from its friendship with Israel. Every high-tech company has a research office here, and the U.S. gets all of Israel’s military tech and knowledge. The world is not collapsing, but the relationship may well be changing.” (07/21/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/alanjosephbauer/2026/07/21/the-world-is-collapsingor-is-it-n2679745
- Cato Podcast, 07/21/26
Source: Cato Institute
“The Fight Against Financial Surveillance.” (07/21/26)
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-podcast/fight-against-financial-surveillance
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 07/21/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“The Silver Lining In Trump’s Iran Debacle.” (07/21/26)
- Rising, 07/21/26
Source: The Hill
“Dems flailing in midterm polls despite Trump; socialists to blame?” (07/21/26)
- Trump Watch, 07/21/26
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“Trump’s Iran Tar Baby Grows Bigger.” (07/21/26)
- Law & Liberty Podcast, 07/21/26
Source: Law & Liberty
“Senior Writer John McGinnis joins the podcast to discuss the latest term of the Supreme Court.” (07/21/26)
https://lawliberty.org/podcast/an-independent-and-originalist-court/